Prison sentences to be cut until 2026 to prevent law and order 'breaking down'

Emergency plans to cut prisoner sentence lengths to ease the overcrowding crisis and avert "a total breakdown in law and order" will last until 2026 at least, the justice secretary has announced.

- ANDY GREGORY

In a furious speech at HMP Five Wells, Shabana Mahmood lambasted the decision by Rishi Sunak's government to delay the new measures announced by Labour yesterday to release thousands of prisoners 40 per cent of the way into their sentences as opposed to halfway through until after the election.

And it was also revealed that the emergency early release scheme brought in by the previous government in October had seen 10,000 inmates freed early, but had barely put a dent in the soaring prison population.

Announcing a review into how the crisis was allowed to unfold, Ms Mahmood accused Tory ministers of putting "their political careers ahead of the safety and security of our country" in the "most disgraceful dereliction of duty I have ever known".

The new justice secretary painted a bleak picture as she warned that the current situation threatened "the collapse of the criminal justice system and a total breakdown of law and order" with "looters running amok, smashing in windows, robbing shops and setting neighbourhoods alight".

Warning of vanloads of dangerous suspects circling the country if no prison spaces are available for them, she said: "The police would have to use their cells as a prison overflow, keeping officers off the streets. Soon, the courts would grind to a halt, unable to hold trials. The police would have to stop carrying out arrests."

The new emergency scheme will begin in September and will be reviewed in 18 months, with prisoners sentenced for sexual, serious violence and domestic abuse offences among those to be excluded, Ms Mahmood said.

She also pledged to recruit 1,000 new probation staff. But there was no mention of new funding for the cash-strapped service. Probation union Napo said it had demanded that Ms Mahmood reopen pay negotiations, refusing to take the threat of industrial action off the table.